Last month, Bath RFC Colts travelled to Beppu, Japan, for ten days on a rugby tour ahead of the World Cup, which takes place in 2019.

Bath’s Tour Captain, Gene Norris, attends Downside School on a rugby scholarship and lives in Holcombe.

The squad are aged sixteen to eighteen years, and are selected from several local schools, including Writhlington, and other schools from in and around Bath. Some of the boys also play for the county team, and have been playing together since they were seven-years-old.

The team experienced the wonderful hot springs of Oita, and helped to strengthen the relationship between Beppu and Bath. They were welcomed warmly, and have built up experiences that will last them a lifetime. The team were assigned home-stay with local families, and experienced all aspects of the culture, as well as visiting schools and running training sessions with young children.

The tour’s main events were four fixtures over the course of ten days. The boys won every match they played, four of four, returning home undefeated. They played three Japanese teams and John Paul College from Rotorua, New Zealand, where the Colts faced the Haka and fought an extremely physical battle to win. The Head Coach, Dean Parsons, said it was the most physical and best-played game of rugby he has seen from the team, and that it was very emotional.

The boys also visited Asia Pacific University and Tsurumidai School, where members of the team presented a talk to the pupils. Finally, the boys and the coaching team spent a day in Tokyo, they returned home shattered but undefeated!